I had to look this up, because the article doesn't really explain it very well (maybe it's common knowledge, but not to me): it seems the numbers "drawn" were usually taken from a publicly verifiable source of randomness. In many cases that was apparently the last three digits of the number of bettors who participated at major race tracks that day, and that number was widely published. In that regard it seems a pretty well tamper-resistant game.
From my own experiences in NY, it was normally the first three numbers of the winning horses at a particular race at a particular track. It varied depending on whose numbers game you were talking about. I had an uncle who was involved with it. He was a money collector, among other things. Yes, it was run by the mob. No, I was not a participant. Yes, these where Italian immigrants.
As far as "illegal" goes, yes numbers games were and are illegal. Nobody cared because the cops got paid off. It's a big part of what made NY what it is. It was so successful that most every state now has a lottery system. The odds of winning in state lotteries are, well, you already know what they are. State lotteries are total rip off designed to fleece the public. State lotteries exist because the pols realized they could make bazillions of dollars running numbers on a large scale and they could chase the competition away, too. So, in a sense, numbers games became legal, but controlled by the usual suspects.
Many people call the lottery a "Stupidity Tax". My dad calls it a "Desperation Tax", which I tend to agree with. I don't think states should have them.
North Carolina held out against having a state lottery for a very long time. The corrupt pols eventually won. The money supposedly goes to education. In reality, it goes into the general fund. That is of note because unlike other states where I have lived, North Carolina seems to rake in a lot of money and little to no overt signs of where the money goes. I live in a different state now and I think I can tell that the tax dollars here aren't being stolen to such a high degree. NC had all kinds of taxes but I had a tough time seeing where any of that money actually went.
Living in NY, you knew it was all corrupt unions and such, so you never had to wonder.
Maybe not but if the state doesn't have them, they will play underground ones. The state ones are guaranteed to pay with low likelihood of fraud. The underground ones have no such promise. I understand that you wish poor people wouldn't gamble but they tend to so given that they will, what is the better solution? State run or underground?
The math behind "sensible bet" relies on the period of time between winnings being shorter than your lifetime. Unless you're buying a huge number of tickets, even the big jackpots aren't worth playing, except just for fun.
Just for fun, you could take the money you'd spend on a lottery ticket and hand it to the next person you see, just to see how they react.
Ah, but even if the net EV is negative, it still makes sense to part with a bit of money that you won't care about, for a miniscule chance of receiving a life-changing amount of money.
If you're not just barely scraping together, dropping $25 on a negative EV lottery is not going to make one whit of difference to your finances. But it might change your life.
Dropping $25,000 on a positive EV lottery, on the other hand, is an incredibly dumb move.
Since most poor people will, in fact, miss that $25, the lottery is a really bad idea for them. Yet, they play it a lot more than the middle class do...
Yeah I don't play the lottery, but I could justify buying a single lottery ticket despite understanding how horrific the odds are.
Since you'll almost certainly lose, I think the true value is in the fantasy of what you would do with a staggering amount of money. You could do this without buying a ticket, of course, but it feels more real when you have some skin in the game. Mathematically, your odds are still effectively zero, but mentally there's a big difference between effectively zero and actual zero.
Thinking of other consumables in that general price range that provide a short, quick fix of enjoyment (cup of coffee, snack, etc.), $1 for a slightly more vivid dream isn't so crazy to me.
Having said all this, I highly doubt it's the mentality of most lottery players.
Interesting I can relate as some who is related by marriage to one of the well know Birmingham based bookies, my Great Great, Great Uncle was scary guy from all reports
Watching peaky blinders Is interesting and I a have a cousin who is an actor who is the direct descendant (and could probably do a better brummie accent)
Wouldn't the payout ratio have been known in advance, when the bet was being placed? From what I understand, the "bankers" would set that ratio in advance and pay out of their pockets if necessary.
In general, it is not like a lottery with all winners evenly sharing (most of) the proceeds. Instead, there is a fixed payout, typically around 60% payback. So with 3 digits (1000 combinations), the payout would be $600 for $1 bet.
I used to work at a lottery Corp here in Canada. Years ago when speaking with the compliance officer we discussed one of the local draws (the lottery itself is national).
The big "bingo machine" used has balls in it that are mixed then one falls out.
The balls were locked in a safe between uses. In a locked room. In a building with security and many cameras. Each door had a door swipe with each user having specific security clearance.
What I found amusing was the balls were cleaned and weighed (yes I made a joke) before every use.
That doesn't even get into the machine itself. I've worked on slot machines so I am sure the bingo machine thing would have security seals on all the EEPROMs. And the EEPROMs would be verified often if not before each draw.
Now imagine the rules and procedures of an underground lottery.
> Now imagine the rules and procedures of an underground lottery.
That's what makes it so fascinating. The bingo ball machine concept you describe requires a lot of trust, that's why so much effort has to go into continuous verification. As resiliency goes, this isn't really a feature.
The underground lottery is interesting precisely because it requires comparatively little trust, and the trust it does require is based on reputation and decentralization. For example, as a numbers player, you would be placing your bets with the same banker, one who you know has always paid out in the past, and who has personal ties to you and your neighborhood. The data source and hence the information about whether or not you won is public and hard to fake.
What makes numbers an illegal racket probably has more to do with low payout ratios and the fact that it's not linked in with the tax system (also, it's an unregulated chaos of private persons conducting it).
Where I worked a sticker was placed over whichever EEPROMs were held configuration information. Some places would seal any IC, EEPROM, PLCC whatever electronic component it was if it was removable it was sealed. Even the doors to the logic area were sealed and locked, then the key for that door locked and the door that opened to get to that door was also locked away in a locked lock box that needed a key singed out from Security which locked it in their lock box.
There are many types and methods of security seal. I've used double-layered stickers that show VOID when peeled off. There are plastic tags that have a heavy wire that you wrap around then seal inside the cap. The wire would have to be cut using a pair of wire cutters. Any type of security seal would have a serial number known to company auditors.
I ran across 'provably fair' a few years ago... pretty neat concept that packages this all up into a pretty cool little cryptographic package: https://dicesites.com/provably-fair
One of the numbers games in Kenosha used the Powerball multi-state lottery numbers as the source of randomness.
Each participant entered a bingo card of N numbers. Each regular number drawn in the regular Powerball results since the start of the game was marked as "hit". When all N of your numbers become "hit", you win. Then you meet a guy behind a bar at 3 AM, backed up by your beefiest brother-in-law, to receive a sack of cash, which was about 60% of what everyone put in at the start of the game.
The numbers guy tunes N to match game length to buy-in price and jackpot size, while also discouraging ties that would multiply the risk from the cash handoffs.
One major public source for numbers games results was the last 3 digits of the daily Dow Jones Industrial Average. Published in most large US newspapers, difficult to hack or predict.
Wouldn't be surprised if it was a bootleggers and baptists kinda deal. That's how nonprofits are think-tanks are generally funded (and it's not necessarily a bad thing — depends on what the donor(s) want to get out of it).
My grandmother grew up in Detroit in the 1920's/30's and speaks fondly of the neighborhood numbers man, as if he was an upstanding member of the Italian-American community.
Underground lottery has existed throughout history and continents, it is a form of gambling that has always been frowned upon by greater society, but accepted as a social thing between community members.
Lottery's are basically an extra poverty tax. That said, we've all basically accepted that concerned citizens know what's best for other people. Even if they really enjoy it, it's voluntary, and mostly harmless.
Instead of enforcing the bad actors people love to just straight up ban things like that. For their own good, etc.
> Although illegal, Bridgett said that “running numbers” wasn’t seen as bad within the black community. It allowed many black businesses to be funded, provided jobs, and helped many financially — her family included. “[The] NAACP, that really important black organization that's been around forever, they were funded in the early years by numbers men and women, that numbers money,” Bridgett said. “So it was circulating throughout the community and those dollars were turning over a lot. And that keeps a community thriving. Because you know if you hit the number and you have some extra money, maybe you'll go to Sarah's beauty shop and basically get your hair done a little more often.”
Classic broken windows fallacy. Everyone who lost would get their hair done a little less often at Sarah's beauty shop, and then you have the large cut which made it so profitable to run and expenses like bribes...
Yeah weird the article didn't push back. Lotteries don't create wealth (except for the person running the lottery). If NAACP was funded by a tax on the innumerate and superstitious, well fine. That's how many states are run. But don't pretend its somehow virtuous.
I suppose its better that a tax on the innumerate and superstitious gets collected by a community member who has some skin-in-the-game when it comes to the community's health, as opposed to outside organized crime or local government, who have an indifferent or outright hostile attitude towards the health of that community.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 84.0 ms ] threadAs far as "illegal" goes, yes numbers games were and are illegal. Nobody cared because the cops got paid off. It's a big part of what made NY what it is. It was so successful that most every state now has a lottery system. The odds of winning in state lotteries are, well, you already know what they are. State lotteries are total rip off designed to fleece the public. State lotteries exist because the pols realized they could make bazillions of dollars running numbers on a large scale and they could chase the competition away, too. So, in a sense, numbers games became legal, but controlled by the usual suspects.
Living in NY, you knew it was all corrupt unions and such, so you never had to wonder.
There's also a conflict of interest. The state is responsible for math education while having an interest in people not doing the math.
I normally get a couple of tickets when the Euro lottery gets large - just for fun.
Just for fun, you could take the money you'd spend on a lottery ticket and hand it to the next person you see, just to see how they react.
If you're not just barely scraping together, dropping $25 on a negative EV lottery is not going to make one whit of difference to your finances. But it might change your life.
Dropping $25,000 on a positive EV lottery, on the other hand, is an incredibly dumb move.
Since most poor people will, in fact, miss that $25, the lottery is a really bad idea for them. Yet, they play it a lot more than the middle class do...
Since you'll almost certainly lose, I think the true value is in the fantasy of what you would do with a staggering amount of money. You could do this without buying a ticket, of course, but it feels more real when you have some skin in the game. Mathematically, your odds are still effectively zero, but mentally there's a big difference between effectively zero and actual zero.
Thinking of other consumables in that general price range that provide a short, quick fix of enjoyment (cup of coffee, snack, etc.), $1 for a slightly more vivid dream isn't so crazy to me.
Having said all this, I highly doubt it's the mentality of most lottery players.
Watching peaky blinders Is interesting and I a have a cousin who is an actor who is the direct descendant (and could probably do a better brummie accent)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_game
The big "bingo machine" used has balls in it that are mixed then one falls out.
The balls were locked in a safe between uses. In a locked room. In a building with security and many cameras. Each door had a door swipe with each user having specific security clearance.
What I found amusing was the balls were cleaned and weighed (yes I made a joke) before every use.
That doesn't even get into the machine itself. I've worked on slot machines so I am sure the bingo machine thing would have security seals on all the EEPROMs. And the EEPROMs would be verified often if not before each draw.
Now imagine the rules and procedures of an underground lottery.
That's what makes it so fascinating. The bingo ball machine concept you describe requires a lot of trust, that's why so much effort has to go into continuous verification. As resiliency goes, this isn't really a feature.
The underground lottery is interesting precisely because it requires comparatively little trust, and the trust it does require is based on reputation and decentralization. For example, as a numbers player, you would be placing your bets with the same banker, one who you know has always paid out in the past, and who has personal ties to you and your neighborhood. The data source and hence the information about whether or not you won is public and hard to fake.
What makes numbers an illegal racket probably has more to do with low payout ratios and the fact that it's not linked in with the tax system (also, it's an unregulated chaos of private persons conducting it).
There are many types and methods of security seal. I've used double-layered stickers that show VOID when peeled off. There are plastic tags that have a heavy wire that you wrap around then seal inside the cap. The wire would have to be cut using a pair of wire cutters. Any type of security seal would have a serial number known to company auditors.
Each participant entered a bingo card of N numbers. Each regular number drawn in the regular Powerball results since the start of the game was marked as "hit". When all N of your numbers become "hit", you win. Then you meet a guy behind a bar at 3 AM, backed up by your beefiest brother-in-law, to receive a sack of cash, which was about 60% of what everyone put in at the start of the game.
The numbers guy tunes N to match game length to buy-in price and jackpot size, while also discouraging ties that would multiply the risk from the cash handoffs.
I seriously doubt the NAACP was funded by it, though. The enterprising types who establish such ventures don't seem big on sharing.
Instead of enforcing the bad actors people love to just straight up ban things like that. For their own good, etc.
Classic broken windows fallacy. Everyone who lost would get their hair done a little less often at Sarah's beauty shop, and then you have the large cut which made it so profitable to run and expenses like bribes...
https://youtu.be/m136JOv3z6w